What does it mean to know we are Made Well?

This year's theme for our Asian Pacific American (APA) InterVarsity conference was Made Well. Many Christian APA students struggle to find meaning and purpose in their ethnic heritage, whether their families have lived in this land for many generations or have recently arrived. 

Since the term "APA" encompasses a diverse range of experiences, the conference also aimed at expanding our definition of who is in our APA family (Southeast Asian, South Asian, Islander, etc.) and creating spaces for underrepresented narratives to be shared and valued.

What did that look like, you ask?

As each person arrived at the conference, they were invited to have their picture taken with a sign saying "Made Well." 

Then we added their photo to the wall collage!

Each person also reflected on the following questions:

What do you like best about your cultural or ethnic heritage?

Answers pictured:

honor/respect; large families are fun; the making of food, bomb food; hospitality and respect for elderly; love in our actions; Dat Korean BBQ all day, every day; family loyalty; favorite thing? The FOOD!; Self-Sacrifice; Korean food and pop culture

What are some fears and insecurities about who you are?

Answers:

any emotion is dangerous; being overweight; not manly enough; not good enough; parents control too much of life; losing my ethnic culture/language; pressure to be successful; grades; failure; my voice is not important; feel less worth when I'm alone

The weekend's speaker, Jonathan Tran, shared his experience as a Vietnamese immigrant whose family struggled financially in the United States. He invited those of us with different stories (parents who came over for education, not to escape war and poverty) to embrace our own struggles as well as those of others. He reminded us that our experiences being an immigrant people are what enable God to use us fully in this world, pointing us to God's work through Moses with the Israelites in the desert.

He also called attention to the ways we are sorely tempted to "settle" -- to try to make a permanent home in a land we are journeying through -- by following various scripts that the world offers. We try to escape the discomfort of being caught between multiple worlds: am I Asian enough if I don't speak the language? am I American enough if I don't constantly talk and assert myself? Maybe if we acquire enough money, familial approval and cultural fluency, we'll finally feel at home.

On the other hand, if we stay with the tension of not fitting in, we could be called into the restorative work God is doing with others who are not welcomed into the social structure of this country because of class, race, or simply the perception that they pose a threat.

I appreciated this word because it made space for there to be pain and confusion in our journey--in fact, this very pain and confusion would serve to shape us into the blessing God intended us to be! It's very counter-intuitive to the narrative of "I suffered so that you, my child, could experience opportunity and never suffer" but I am constantly reminded:

"As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Isaiah 55:9

Made Well -- InterVarsity's Asian Pacific American Conference

Made Well | APA 2014 Recap from David Luoh on Vimeo.

Discipleship Cohort Photoshoot

We started off the semester with a two-day conference for the leaders. The first morning we spent in solitude and silence, walking around the campus before it got crazy busy and full. Then we came back together and sang together on Memorial Glade!

Soaring Upward on Thermals

Spring Semester is here!

In the Kingdom of God at UC Berkeley, students and staff alike are learning a new way of participating in what God is doing. It looks like this:

http://www.3sigma.com/prisoners-of-our-own-device/

We are learning to identify the spiritual thermals (rising columns of warm air) that already exist all around us and to soar with them to new heights. Instead of madly flapping our wings (read: recipe for burnout) in an attempt to gain altitude, we're taking a lesson from the birds God has created and trusting that when we do less, He does more.

Since we are people, not birds, what does this look like?

1. Communal prayer is happening more often! We have two weekly student-led prayer times, asking God to show us what He's up to in the lives of our friends, classmates, focus groups, and the world.
2. We are opening up more about our struggles. It takes a lot of faith for students to put down their polished masks and trust that it is actually good for our community and for our relationships with God to come clean about what's underneath: the darker stuff that goes largely unacknowledged by a highly competitive campus environment.
3. We are taking to heart what God tells us and making new choices. For many of the students, this looks like pursuing something that they are deadly afraid to fail at because it actually matters to them, like music and writing for some of our Electrical Engineering Computer Science (EECS) folks. For others, it looks like finally acknowledging workaholism is tied to pride in one's performance and trusting that letting go of some units is actually a faithful and God-honoring choice.

Wow! Praise God for the ways that He's engaging our whole community in this dynamic shift. It's not a brand-new concept, but there's a newness of hope and joy that I'm seeing each day and in each interaction with students. Please join me in celebrating and praying for more release of God's gifts within these beautiful sons and daughters!

My Testimony

My name is Estelle, and I want to give glory to God. 

2013 was a big year for me. In March, I made a watershed career/life decision and transferred from working at an InterVarsity chapter at Stanford to staffing the multiethnic chapter at Cal. God had already called me to the mission field, specifically to cross-cultural contexts in which I would be the least comfortable so that I would have the most opportunity to see Him use me for the kingdom. I saw the move to Cal as a step in the direction of that calling, a step that would take me out of the known, safe environment I'd been calling home for seven years and into new territory to try my wings.

Calling the move "uncomfortable" is a whopping understatement. Without deep friendships waiting for me in the East Bay, I felt incredibly lonely and turned to my work to fill that void. Unfortunately, staff work is notoriously unstructured and difficult to evaluate, so while I became very anxious about my performance and proving myself to be a good staff, I actually had very few concrete measures to go by. After a few weeks of escalating fear, I fell headlong into a depressive episode that made it difficult to remember why I had moved, what was good about my being at Cal, and whether God was a good, loving provider.

In this terrible time, the core narrative that developed was, "God must see this pain, and He must have anticipated it, but He allowed it. Not only that, but it's at such an extreme point that I am considering leaving Cal before I've been here a full month. He must want me to solve this myself, so I can't count on His help. I am completely alone."

With the severity of this depression, I felt as though whatever safety net I had foolishly expected to be there was absent. I could not interpret for myself why this was happening, let alone for other people, so meeting new people felt even more challenging. I wanted to be the "me" I had been at Stanford, but I was instead this frightened, lost, and helpless version of myself that was looking to other people for direction. This felt particularly undesirable in the realm of ministry where I am seen as a leader, responsible for bringing order and guidance. When it came to listening to God, I could not hear his response, however much I cried out to him. I remember praying, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me, a sinner" for an hour straight, sobbing in the midst of not knowing what was happening or why. I did not know what to do.

I see this as a moment of wilderness. In fact, the passage from Deuteronomy 8 was prophesied over me by someone at Stanford in the spring. I saw scorpions and snakes, I felt thirsty and hungry, I lacked direction and wondered if it was a good thing to have left Egypt. What if I had just made up this "calling" and now I was paying for my mistake? If that was the case, how would I ever make a big decision again? My confidence in myself was shot, and no one could really speak that truth over me because they didn't know me as well.

When I think back to the fall, I see more than just the narrative my fear painted for me. In fact, just as the Israelites' shoes did not wear out and their feet did not swell for forty years, I ended up in the care of a psychologist who was able to help me. She pointed me in the direction of some new concepts: self-compassion, mindfulness, ephemerality (thoughts and emotions don't last forever), and how Jesus encounters me not solely in words, but also through physical gestures (hugs). Though I could not always depend on people to know what I needed, people asked me what they could do. I had a friend who hugged me for probably 20 minutes while I just cried into her shoulder. My supervisor did what he could to help me enter in at a gradual pace and affirmed that he wanted to see me thrive in the long term.

I came face-to-face with my own fragility, and it overwhelmed all my attempts to get around it or ignore it. As I wrestled with what it meant to potentially have a chronic mental illness, I realized that my vulnerability would not be assuaged by a poultice of words, but only when bathed in tangibly expressed love would it be transformed into something that connects, rather than disconnects, me to God and to others made in His image.

It was my pride that died, painfully nailed to a cross of shame.

It was my joy that He revived, a joy that encompasses the pain that underlies all human experience.